Automated product order-filling systems are generally well known, and typically involve the operation of a serees of product unit delivery machines that in sequence deliver different computer-controlled quantities of units of different products to adjacent order-receiving containers such as open shipping boxes as the containers are sequentially, intermittently, and incrementally indexed past the product unit delivery machine delivery outlets by cooperating, computer-controlled conveyor equipment.
One particular machine known to applicants is the article dispensing machine disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,046,641 issued to Gray. Such machine is designed to dispense newspapers and similar items. The prior art machine has no capability for adjustment to deliver product units having a different thickness, in large part because it does not dispense articles through an adjustable gap between a unit-feeder subassembly and a unit-picker subassembly. In Gray a feed subassembly simply advances a product unit into picker subassembly which moves the unit in a transverse direction away from the intersection of the two subassemblies.
Other prior art apparatus known to Applicants includes the lift system of U.S. Pat. No. 5,626,335 granted to Bulka et al., and the tthe book stacker disclosed U.S. Pat. No. 4,525,118 issued to Bulka et al., and the two-axis article loader/unloader of U.S. Pat. No. 5,611,193 granted to Farrelly.
Such machines have heretofore posed a number of substantial operating problems that have remained unaddressed by the automation industry, including unnecessarily low rates of product unit-picking, inability to be quickly changed to accommodate differently-sized products in a particular unit-picker apparatus, and causing product unit damage, especially when high picking rates are involved.
We have discovered a novel construction for a product unit-delivery assembly which clearly avoids the shortcomings of the known prior art automated product delivery equipment.
Other advantages and objectives of the present invention will become apparent from consideration of the detailed descriptions, drawings, and claims which follow.